COVID Cases Surge as Vaccination Rates Lag

As the COVID case count continues its steady climb upward, vaccination rates in the county remained flat over the last week.

Over the last week, another 87 county residents tested positive for the virus, bringing Washington County’s total case count for August to 100 That total is more than the case count for the entire month of July, and is also well above the number of cases in the same month of 2020.

Driving the rising case count in the state is the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Approximately 14 percent of people testing positive for COVID were infected with the Delta variant, up from under seven percent at the end of July.

Since the Delta variant first appeared in June, the number of that variant’s cases has doubled every two weeks. That is a much higher transmission rate that the original variant of the coronavirus, and that is reflected in the rising number of new cases since the start of July. 

Read the full story in this week’s issue.